Semi-automated derivation of digital embroid styled maps
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Dong, L.; 2Burghardt, D.
1INSTITUT OF CARTOGRAPHY, TU DRESDEN Email: dirk.burghardt@tu-dresden.de
2INSTITUT OF CARTOGRAPHY, TU DRESDEN Email: dirk.burghardt@tu-dresden.de
Abstract
Recent developments in web based and mobile cartography are strongly driven by technology. Digital maps are often presented with a stereotyping design. So far less focus were set on transferring the variety of map styles available with traditional maps into the digital world. An interesting approach of simulating a handcraft look and feel for web maps are presented by Stamen with the watercolour map. There are also promising designs with sketchy rendering within information visualisation domain and nonphotorealistic rendering in computer graphics. The aim of our research was to create an digital embroid styled map as example of simulating traditional map style. Therefore geodata from OpenStreetMap were pre-processed, in particular the categorisation were carried out for subdividing objects dependent on their attributes into style oriented layers. Layer with area objects were rendered and exported as raster images, while the layer containing line objects are exported as vector files. Following that a number of image processing steps had to be applied on the derived layer. The line objects (like streets) were stroked with a special designed brush to imitate the handmade stitching. Variations had to be carried out through adaptation of brush parameters and colour variations. Important was the selection of “Dynamic Effects” and “Jitter” to achieve the random effect which simulates handmade work. For the area objects (like lakes) an additional vector layer had to be created with a collection of parallel vector lines, which were used to stroke out the filling of each raster layer. The stroking process had to be carried out three times with different colour shades from dark to light (same hue and different tone). For the background area we used an appropriate seamless texture image, which were derived from a picture of a real fabric. The derivation of the tileable texture image were achieved by applying the clone tool to the boarder of the texture. As software we used ArcGIS for the data processing, TileMill for initial rendering and GIMP for the image processing. So far a semi-automated workflow were applied with some interactive parts within the image processing. For setting up a WMS with embroid styled map tiles the image processing workflow will be implemented in a fully automated way by using the GIMP library. There is a picture attached to this abstract. Please go to http://kartographie.geo.tu-dresden.de/institute/staff/burghardt_2.php or use the direct link http://kartographie.geo.tu-dresden.de/aigaion/attachments/Abstract%20-%20Embroid%20style%20map.pdf-e4ed48d03c3a0666c5a4067a1468aac1.pdf
Keywords
Embroid Styled Map; Map Design; Artistic Map Styles